


Too Much Inside My Head

by finefeatheredfriend



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Game Ending, Character swap, Descent into Madness, Earl Whitehorse is not okay, Gen, It was all a dream trope but I tried to do it so it made sense, Not so much a descent into madness as a plunge into madness really, Walk Away Ending (Far Cry), Walk Away/Secret Ending but Modified (Far Cry)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 02:52:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18864247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finefeatheredfriend/pseuds/finefeatheredfriend
Summary: What if Sheriff Whitehorse hadn't been saved by Virgil and Tracey before Rook shows up at Hope County Jail? What if they saved the Marshal instead and Earl fell prey to his basest instincts?





	1. Endless Bliss

**Author's Note:**

> Alright folks, this one is going to come in leaps and spurts because it's an idea newly bouncing around in my mind. I'm madly in love with the descent into madness trope and wanted a chance to play with it and explore Sheriff Earl Whitehorse's character more because I freaking love him. I wanted to play with a darker, more depressed version of him who's just so very done that maybe staying in the Bliss is okay...until it's not.  
> \--------------------------------------------------------------------

**PREFACE:**

_“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”_

_― William Shakespeare, Hamlet_

_\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

**ACT I - ENDLESS BLISS**

 

_“I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind”_

_― Edgar Allen Poe_

 

                The icepack stings when it touches his blackened eye. The young tow-headed boy winces and wipes the back of his arm across his nose, leaving a trail of snot that he ignores, miserable as he already is.

                “You know better than to make your father angry, Earl,” his mother says softly, holding the pack to his face. He nods a little, a tear streaming out of the other eye, the one that his father hadn’t struck with a closed fist, his face crinkled in cold fury. Earl had left his toy truck out, his father had tripped on it, and now Earl had no toy truck, and a black eye. “Your father loves you, Earl. He just wants you to be better. Okay?” He can see her hands trembling, knows she’s every bit as afraid of his father as he is.

                “He doesn’t want me to be better,” he mumbles, “he wants me to be dead.”

                “That’s not true, Earl. Earl, look at me. Hey. I love you.” He meets her hazel eyes with his blue-stained-with-green ones and then looks down, moving away from the icepack.

                “Why don’t you go in your room and play?” she suggests, voice sad and guilty. Wordlessly, wincing at the ache in his ribs and his legs from the beating, he makes his way down the hallway, pinching his eyes shut in fear when the floor squeaks as he walks past his parents’ bedroom door where his father has retired for the evening.

                “Boy!” Heart in his throat, Earl turns to meet his father’s eyes. The big man is lying propped up on the bed with a Bible in his hands. “You make sure you say your prayers before you go to sleep.”

                “Yes, sir,” Earl answers dutifully.

                “And don’t let me catch you leaving any more toys out. Could have killed me or your mom. Now, go on.” Earl wants to sprint the rest of the way to his room but doesn’t, remembers another beating for doing so in the past. He gets to his room and closes the door quietly, climbing up onto his thin mattress with the threadbare quilt his grandmother had made him. He picks up his pillow and sobs quietly into it, ribs aching, eye stinging as tears make their way past the puffy, bruised skin.

\--

                Now, as Earl lies panting in the back of a cult pickup, eye blackened and ribs sore from kicks and punches, he wonders, as he wondered then, how things could get any worse. His arms are bound tightly behind his back to his ankles, like a hog, he realizes with a flash of anger, and his yellow-tinted aviator glasses are hanging partially off his nose. His brown Stetson is miraculously still on his head, a testament to correct hat sizing, he supposes dully.

                At six feet and two hundred and thirty pounds, a .44 Magnum L on his hip and nearly thirty years of experience as a police officer, Earl Whitehorse is not a man to be trifled with, but the cult has trifled, Lord, how they’ve trifled, but right about now he’s feeling more fed up than angry.

                The truck bumps roughly over the road and he thinks idly to himself about how he ended up here. Not literally how he ended up in the back of a pickup with a bruised torso, a black eye and limbs hogtied behind him, but how he had ended up at this point. Too much tolerance after a life spent angry. He had spent so much of his life angry. The first several years of his life were spent being angry at his father, then at his mother for dying. Then he’d spent years being angry at everyone and everything. Then he’d been angry and devastated at an ex-wife. He’d spent even more time being angry at a dead friend, a friend that had taught him “to leave well enough alone” before another bar fight got him thrown in jail. The same dead friend had gotten himself shot in the line of duty investigating a drug ring. So much for leaving well enough alone. But Earl had. Because this cult scared the shit out of him, scared him to his core more than it angered him. They had infected everyone and everything in this quiet little county in Montana and the next thing Earl knew, he was a sheriff in a sovereign religious state. And there was not a goddamned thing he could have done about it.

                He imagined, as he laid there, aching, angry, tired, afraid, how things might have gone differently if Rook had just…walked away. If they hadn’t reached for Joseph Seed’s outstretched hands and cuffed him, ignoring his little huffed “God will not let you take me.”

                Earl imagined he would have pushed Joseph Seed’s hands down himself. Would have nodded solemnly to Rook in agreement. He would have led the way out of that terrifying wooden church against Marshal Burke’s objections. He could imagine the stubborn asshole’s voice in his mind.

                “What are you doing? What are you doing?! What the fuck are you doing? Sheriff, get back there!” he would have bellowed, trying to get in Earl’s way, placing a hand on his chest. Earl would have batted the touch away, tired of this condescending little man that was shorter and stupider than him.

                “Shut up and listen!” Earl would have growled in his purring baritone voice, finally speaking his mind fully. “You put those cuffs on him none of us get out of here alive.” He would have turned to Rook and she would have agreed. Earl would have put his wide hand on the door with certainty this time, no hesitation about opening these doors now.

                “I will have you all arrested! If you step out of this chapel, I’m placing you all under arrest!” Burke would have crowed.

                “So be it,” Earl would have rumbled, a tiger’s growl, uncaring of the opinion of a sheep. He would have swung the church doors wide, pushed out into fresh air and just fucking walked away. This cult was not a thing to be trifled with lightly. Three deputies, a sheriff and a marshal were not enough to take it down, a fact he had stated from the beginning.

                But none of that had happened. So here he is, bouncing around in the back of a pickup like a lumpy sack of sentient turnips. He spits residual blood from his mouth from a punch he’d received when all hell had broken loose in the compound and curses under his breath. The truck grinds to a stop and his face is pressed hard against the back of the cab when the driver brakes abruptly. Earl groans in pain when arms grab and haul him out of the truck, dropping him to the ground with a thud. He surveys his surroundings, takes in the open field with flowing golden grass and those tall Angel’s Trumpet flowers that smell like gardenia and vanilla mixed with the sickly sweet rot of a corpse. His vision goes a little blurry as the overwhelming scent hits him, but it is nothing compared to the nausea and disorientation he feels when, bonds around his ankles untied, he is guided into a bunker carved into the side of the tall hill that is blanketed by the grass and flowers.

                On the way in, Earl is marched past individuals clad in clothing that suggests the sterile, creeping horror of infirmary wards, or insane asylums. The figures watch them blankly, mouths and noses covered in white cloth masks. They are holding rakes or hoes, tending the flowers. Some of them have long strings of drool dangling unattended from the end of their mask. They all have a green glaze over their eyes. In all aspect but form, they appear inhuman, blank and dead inside, aggressive only when someone steps too close, and then they hiss and growl and raise their tools like weapons, their eerie screeches the most inhuman thing about them.

                Trying to ignore the horde of zombies he has just been led past, Earl assesses his feeling as blood returns to his extremities. Through his boots, Earl can feel his ankles aching, pins and needles shuddering through him in response to being tied so tightly and for so long. A cult member shoves him forward and he throws a shoulder back for good measure, glaring at the bearded asshole that felt the need to push him faster than he’s already moving. The whole place is unsettling, eerie. There is green gas pouring from the vents, dumping down the walls like some hideous waterfall, the odious chemical coiling dangerously on the floor around their feet like some eldritch snake winding itself around its victim and waiting for just the right moment to strike.

                The lights above him flicker and go out in random, uncertain intervals, pouring darkness around Earl and the others, giving the long descent into the bunker a Stygian atmosphere that leaves a chill running down his back. Specters flicker at the edges of his vision, there only when he does not concentrate on them too long, some preternatural cacophony of children running and playing in the corner of his eye, gone in a flash when he turns to catch them. Uneasy, he jerks at his bonds and receives a swift blow between his shoulder blades when he does so, the end of the weapon used also striking at the base of his neck, leaving him even more unsteady than before.

                Earl is led, at last, into an oppressively dark room, filled with that same green mist curling around his feet. He is forced roughly into an examination chair and his arms and legs are bound to it, preventing any escape. If ever the hand of Providence was to step in on his behalf, now was the time.

                It does not.

                An apparition appears before him, a light-skinned, honey-haired young woman with blue eyes. The features are familiar. He searches his mind for a name, but comes up empty. He does, however, remember arresting her in the past on possession of drugs. He knows she now goes by the name “Faith Seed.”

                “Sheriff,” she says, voice light and airy, a hallucinatory quality about her tone and pitch that rings discordant in his ears.

                “What do you want from me?” Earl demands, struggling with the bonds furiously. His captors are somewhere behind him, silent, waiting.

                “I want you to join me in the Bliss,” the apparition tells him, floating above him with wings made of gossamer air and light coils of fog.

                “I don’t want any part of this,” he tells her, raising his chin defiantly. She smiles and laughs, a bell-like, but also unnerving and unnatural sound that raises the hairs on his arms.

                “You will,” she promises. And then she is gone. Strong arms grab his head and he struggles, panicking suddenly, feeling malicious intent in this touch. He recognizes with sudden horror the cloth mask that is forced over his nose and mouth and he cries out, afraid, thrashing madly in his seat. He feels cold gas fed from a line attached to the mask and he coughs, still struggling, ribs and abdomen reminding him of injury as he does so, but he ignores it, is desperate to escape.

                “Calm down,” says a dead voice.

                “It will be alright,” says another corpse.

                But it is not alright.

                Earl thrashes and he thrashes and he thrashes and he thrashes, crying, screaming, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in for a rescue he knows won’t come. His hat flies from his head, forgotten and his glasses fall askew, the wire frames digging deep into one side of his nose just above the edge of the mask. He shudders and struggles and takes in deep gasping breaths as his heart beats madly in his breast, a vicious staccato of desperation and denial of death. And suddenly everything is alright. He sees, with a sudden searing moment of such sagacious perspicuity he is surprised at how he could ever have been alarmed:

               Everything is alright.

                _Everything is alright._

_**Everything is alright.**_

                Earl is sitting at his desk nursing a cold cup of coffee, swearing when he spills some down the front of his shirt.

                “Pratt, where the hell are those incident reports I asked you to turn in a week ago?”

                “Still working on them, Sheriff.”

                “Well, get ‘em done, goddamn it, I don’t have all day. I need them by five p.m. You get them to me any later than that I stick you in records for a month,” Earl gripes. “Hudson,” he radios, “What’s your status?”

                “I’m ten-four, Sheriff. Headed back to the station now. My incident reports are on my desk, sir, if that’s why you’re radioing.” Earl clenches his jaw, nods.

                “Ten-four, Hudson. Rook!” She peeks timidly over their monitor.

                “Sheriff?”

                “Have you finished your incident reports?”

                “Right here, Sheriff,” she says, standing and bringing them to him. He takes them and gives her an appraising look.

                “Your squad car clean?”

                “Did it this afternoon, sir.”

                “Adequately stocked on flares, notepads…” he trails off.

                “Yes, sir, all done, sir.”

                “Well, alright then. Get back to work.”

                “Sheriff?”

                “Yeah, Rook?”

                _“Everything is alright.”_

                “Wh-what?” he asks stupidly.

                **“ _Everything is alright.”_** Junior Deputy Robin Young’s usually pale, freckled, friendly face flickers to a hideous phantasm of dread and despair, a weeping mask of terror and agony, and then the horrifying vision is gone.

                “Sheriff?” his junior deputy asks. “Did you hear me?”

                “What is it, Rook?” he snaps, heart beating wildly.

                “I asked what time the meeting with the Mayor is?”

                “Oh.” Earl pauses, wipes a hand over his mustache to straighten it. “I don’t know. Sometime this afternoon.”

\--

                “Very sorry to hear that your wife left you recently, Earl,” Mayor Virgil Minkler says as he shakes Earl’s hand, the statement so wildly non-sequitur it gives Earl an instant sense of unease and distaste for this smaller man.

                “It was a mutual decision,” Earl blurts, unsure why it matters to clarify. His silver and gold crosshatched wedding band still weighs heavily on the ring finger of his left hand. He had not been able to bring himself to take it off yet. He remembers, frozen in pain and horror, walking in to see two writhing bodies tangled in their bedsheets, one his wife, the other, not his own. He remembers pale, sucking fury, remembers screaming, remembers beating the man half to death, then remembers clutching his chest, falling to the floor, his left arm numb. The image flickers away as he sits at his desk again, settling into his leather desk chair, hands folded across his belly, still muscular, but gone a little soft with old age and stress.

                “Also heard you had a heart attack here recently,” Virgil comments, testing the waters, clearly seeing how much Earl will tolerate before his manners stretch to the breaking point. Earl evaluates this conniving man over the rim of his glasses.

                “Being sheriff is a stressful job,” he replies, a patent lie. What is stressful is finding your wife of nearly twenty-five years in bed fucking another man. Virgil reminds Earl of the man who had been fucking his wife a little, those two hooded brown eyes, serpentine in their appearance as they gaze at him, calculating, one politician looking for the weakness in another. Earl had been considering running for mayor after retiring as sheriff. Not anymore. He was just too tired. His confidence was blown. How could he advertise himself as a likeable, desirable candidate when not even his wife wanted him anymore? Sitting across the desk from this man, Earl feels himself shrink, powerless and impotent. Slap a full head of hair on the guy and shave off fifteen years and Virgil was the man his wife had been fucking, an stuffy engineer with more money than sense, apparently a better choice of mate than Earl, a man with more sense than money, and more loyalty than his wife, apparently.

                “So the taxpayers have been complaining about use of departmental resources,” Virgil comments, switching tactics and subjects so quickly it gives Earl whiplash. “Do you have anything to say about that?”

                “Only that the taxpayers haven’t been paying attention to what we’re spending those resources on. Better safety equipment, more thorough training for our officers. Replacing computers that can only connect to dot-matrix printers and write data to five and a half inch floppy disks. I’ll invite any objecting taxpayer to come see how we’ve utilized our resources and I doubt they’ll complain once they do.” Virgil gives a short little nod, as though he only half-believes, or half-agrees.

                “If you say so, Earl.”

                “It’s Sheriff,” Earl reminds him, tone a little terse.

                “Come on,” Virgil cajoles. “We’re all friends here.” Earl narrows his eyes a little.

                “I don’t know, Virgil. Are we? Seems to me you just came in here to get a rise out of me.”

                “They say that’s not as easy to do these days,” Virgil responds easily. Earl gives a humorless chuckle.

                “It’s been a while since I’ve beaten Dutch senseless for some sovereign citizen nonsense or other if that’s what you mean. I have a temper. Everyone knows it. I have it under control now, everyone knows that too, or they wouldn’t keep electing me sheriff.”

                “You’re sure of that? You’re sure that’s why they elect you sheriff? Are you sure it’s not because you ignore what the cult is doing because you know that half the county residents are cult members now?” The voice that asks this is not Virgil’s. It is soft and feminine, teasing him. Earl blinks, shakes himself.

                “What did you say?” Earl asks Virgil softly.

                “I said, ‘You’re sure they’re going to elect you sheriff again?’ You’ve been sheriff for nearly twenty years. Don’t you think it’s time to step down from…politics?” Virgil ends pointedly.

                “Don’t you think it’s time,” the soft voice asks in his ear, “to let go of all these things you’re worrying about, and just go into the Bliss? It’s better there. Just let go. Step into the Bliss.”

                Earl takes a hacking breath, his broad chest rising and falling as he sucks in air, tries to suck in _just_ air, and fails, that sickly sweet gas following with it, filtered into the mask that is strapped tightly over his mouth and nose. He knows his .44 Magnum is still strapped to his side. If he could just get his arms free, if he could just work loose, if he could just…

                **_EVERYTHING IS ALRIGHT._**

                “How could you do this to me?” Earl asks, head in his hands, his Stetson on his knee, his glasses on the table. They sit in awkward silence eating a dinner she had made. He looks up to meet her eyes with bloodshot ones of his own.

                “I’m glad you’re out of the hospital, Earl,” Molly says quietly, scooping up a forkful of mashed potatoes and bringing them daintily to her lips.

                “You didn’t even come pick me up after I had a heart attack,” he whispers, betrayal in his tone. “Is that how little you care about me?” She sets her fork down.

                “Things have changed, Earl.”

                “They sure as shit have, Molly. For starters you let another man fuck you,” he snaps, suddenly furious again. He takes a deep, steadying breath, is about to apologize for his words, thinks better of it and says, “What changed? Why did you do this? Was I not enough for you?” Earl’s tone is deeply hurt, grieved. Molly’s face goes cold, as though it is carved out of ice.

                “You were never home. You were always out working on something or another, working on some case or other. And when you weren’t on a case, you were campaigning. You didn’t even ask me the last time you ran for sheriff.” She folds her napkin curtly in her lap, sets it precisely on the table.

                “So your solution was to fuck another man until I noticed? Or was I never supposed to notice?” he asks, meeting her blue eyes steadily.

                “You say that like you don’t spend all your free time with your young new deputy,” she snaps. With disgust, he stands, jamming his hat back on his head and slamming a fist down on the table so hard his knuckles ache.

                “She’s our _goddaughter_ , Molly. That you would even think that of me…we’re done.”

                “What do you mean–”

                “I mean we’re done, Molly. It’s over. I’ll…I’ll have legal send over some paperwork next week. I’m staying at the cabin.”

                “Don’t you want to stop hurting?” that soft, feminine voice asks. “Don’t you want to be whole again? Just let go, Sheriff. Let go.”

                Earl lets out a long breath he had been holding and breathes in deeply. He needed to get out of here. He needed to escape. He has to stop this, he has to stop the cult. It’s his job. It’s his duty. He has to get out of here and save his deputies. Save them like he couldn’t before.

                “God dammit!” Earl had shouted then, punching the door of his squad car before he crawls miserably in and drives himself to his fishing cabin.

\--

                With a similar anger, Earl tries to shout now, past the gas, past the suffocating sensation of the mask.

                “Just let go, Earl,” Faith says, floating near him. “Let go of all that pain, and anger. Go into the bliss.”

                “Alright,” he says softly beneath the mask, defeated. “Alright.” She kisses him gently on the forehead, a chaste, loving kiss that sends a pleasant warmth through him. His eyes, once itchy and painful are now painless and cleared.

                “‘Now a soft kiss,’” she whispers in his ear, quoting one of his favorite poems so earnestly he wonders if this is still all in his head, “‘…by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss…’ Everything is alright, Earl. _Everything is alright._ ”

                Earl steps out into the fresh, flower-scented air of the field, mindless of his destiny, ignorant of his woe, just blank. Just happy. He trudges forward blankly. Everything is alright.         

                **_EVERYTHING IS ALRIGHT._**


	2. Amazing Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faith's influence on Earl gets even stronger and makes him do something that would have been unimaginable outside her influence.  
> \-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

**ACT II - AMAZING GRACE**

 

_“In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality.”_

_― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment_

 

                Maybe everything is not alright.

                Earl takes a deep, steadying breath, takes in his surroundings, blue-green eyes dilating and contracting as though they can’t quite decide if it is light or dark here. There is swirling, nauseatingly sweet fog rolling around his legs, wet dew staining his khaki gray tac pants. He shakes his head, trying to clear it, feeling that his hat and glasses are still on, and that the mask is gone. He shuffles forward, feeling, as though in a dream, that he cannot run, as though his feet are firmly anchored in some mire that prevents flight.

                Stumbling, Earl stops trying to flee when he hears an eerie, distorted rendition of a hymn that is too well-known not to be recognized.

                “ _Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see…”_

Raised by an abusive father that raised Earl by taking the phrase “spare the rod and spoil the child” too literally, Earl had never had much interest in church or God any of that nonsense. But he knew this hymn. Had grown up hearing it when he was forced to go to church, had heard it on the radio, had heard it at funerals and weddings and in tv shows and movies. It was inescapable. It was his wife’s favorite hymn.

                Earl had thought, as so many people do when they get married, that his wife Molly was the love of his life. He adored her. Doted on her. He bought her favorite chocolates sometimes, just because. He picked her a bouquet of wildflowers anytime he took a call in the Henbane River region of Hope County, an area known for its scarlet paintbrushes, mountain lupines and sunflowers. All his life Earl had been a man of anger, but being with Molly had shown him that he could be a man of great love. Until that fateful afternoon when he had come home early, hoping to surprise her. Looking back, he knows he should have spent more time tending the garden that was his marriage. But failing to tend one’s garden is not necessarily an invitation for weeds.

                If seeing her tangled in ecstasy with another man hadn’t been enough to permanently slant his view of her, her accusation that he might be doing something with the (very) young Junior Deputy that also happened to be their goddaughter would have been the final straw. He had walked away from his marriage just a year before and still had not recovered. Spending nearly a quarter of a century of one’s life loving the same person and then just…not, will break a person. Some part of Earl, some unbroken piece of him that his father’s abuse had never touched was destroyed instead by Molly.

                Stumbling idly through this empty field, looking back on his life, he wondered why he would ever want to leave this peaceful field where memories still ached with a kind of dulled pang, but where happiness filled him for the first time. Why would he choose misery over happiness? This place is where he belongs.

                Earl’s best friend, Rook’s father, had died in the line of duty five years ago. He still remembered the haunting feeling of looking a man in the eyes as the life drains out of him, still remembered the heavy weight of his friend’s head and shoulders, pulled into Earl’s lap, still remembers the hot, sticky feeling of his friend’s blood on his hands and his clothes and his car. His happiness abruptly gone, he feels himself pale. With a sudden retch, he vomits, overwhelmed by negative emotions. This time, there is no soothing reminder that everything is alright. He breathes deeply and the sensation of bliss is back, welcome and soothing, a sensation he had never once felt while dealing with the politics of this county.

                Virgil Minkler had been an on-going pain in Earl’s ass for a very long time. The upbeat, chipper man always knew how to put on a friendly face, but when it came down to it, he recognized Earl for what he was – a threat. Earl was smarter, wiser, and in Earl’s opinion, better looking. Virgil knew that Earl would be after the mayorship once he’d grown sick of the bureaucracy that came with being a political officer of the law. If you have to deal with politics, Earl figures, why not do it without getting guns pointed in your direction on a routine basis? Ultimately, Earl had decided against this run when his marriage had dissolved. He had decided instead that he would be retiring the next year, that he would stay at his cabin and fish until the day he died. He takes another soothing gulp of air.

                Rook. Rook had been the one good thing to come out of any of this. She was sweet, and smart and had good instincts, but most importantly, she looked to him like a father, which was exactly the kind of responsibility and confidence boost he needed to kick him out of his rut of self-pity. She had made it through police academy with flying colors and was in the last six months of her probationary period at the department. Initially, he’d been concerned she wasn’t going to make it. She could be timid, quiet, so reserved the two could fish together an entire day and she’d never say a word. She would just wish him well at the end of the day, hug his neck and trudge off back to her vehicle and that was that. But the quiet, the eerie silence that hung upon her like a cloak was a gift as a deputy. She picked up on more, heard more, saw more, for lack of speaking. He had never said it out loud, but he was damned proud of everything she had done so far, and he knew her father would have been too.

                Perhaps a remnant of his shitty upbringing, he was always aloof, a little gruff, showing only bare approval when Rook did something correctly. Grand gestures didn’t suit him. Grand gestures, as his marriage showed, had gotten him nowhere.

                Earl thinks to himself again, why should he leave? It’s comfortable. Quiet, if you can tune out that damned song. Rook can take care of herself, provided she’s still alive. She’s capable. All of his deputies are capable, because he trained them to be. His work here is done. He can stay here. Stay in this Bliss where no one has hurt him.

                “Earl! Earl, we have to go!” comes an urgent voice.

                “I don’t want to leave,” he tells them dully.

                “Earl, look at me. It’s Virgil Minkler. Now, I know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I gotta get you outta here. You’re the sheriff, and we need your help We got the marshal, now we just need you to come with us too.” Virgil has grabbed Earl’s left hand, and has his other hand on Earl’s right shoulder, shaking it gently. He meets Virgil’s chocolate brown eyes with his own blankly.

                “I don’t want to go,” Earl repeats. “I’m happy here. Or, at least, I’m not in pain here.”

                “Earl…” Virgil holds his hand tight, tries to pull him away from this place, this bliss. Earl yanks his hand away and draws his sidearm, all his anger, all his rage coursing back through him as though it had never left. He hears a soft giggle next to him and he doesn’t see Virgil anymore. He sees the man that fucked his wife. He sees his father. He sees the criminal that killed his best friend. With a soft, steadying breath, he aims, and squeezes the trigger. Virgil Minkler falls, lifeless, to the ground.

                Faith flickers in front of him, all smiles. He feels himself dumbly smile back.

                “Isn’t this better, Earl? Isn’t this better than fighting?” He doesn’t say anything because she knows his answer. Yes, this is a far better fate than fighting and dying after a long, miserable life. “Then don’t leave me, Earl. You have to stay here. You have to stay in the Bliss.” She wisps away and he holds a hand out after her, vaguely mumbling the words to “Amazing Grace” under his breath.

                Earl exists. Just exists in the field, wandering happily around, and around, and around, embracing the ecstasy and numbness of this place. He closes his eyes and tilts his head up in the afternoon sun, feeling its rays like a warm embrace.

                Some unknowable time later, Faith reappears above him. “I need you to do something for me, Earl.”

                “Anything,” he tells her, meaning it and he listens to what she has to say.

\--

                Earl waits patiently for Rook to arrive. Faith leads her slowly to the boat where he is waiting.

                “Rook,” he greets her with a happy chuckle, feeling euphoric. “Come here, it’s alright,” he tells her, taking her hand and helping her into the boat. He gives another happy little chuckle, fiddling with his handlebar mustache idly while she adjusts in her seat. “I know you’re here to take me back. That’s alright. She knows. Everybody knows. You think you’re doin’ the right thing, you think you need to rescue me, but you don’t. I spent enough of my life rescuing other people, Rook, I know when somebody needs rescuin’ and it ain’t me. I’m happy here. For the first time in years, I’m actually happy. I don’t want to go back…ever.” Earl is paddling them down a short segment of creek, butterflies fluttering lazily around him, one alighting on his badge for a moment before flittering away.

                “Rook, I know I’ve tried givin’ you fatherly advice in the past, but, have you…have you ever stopped and thought about your life? Now, I’ve been alive a lot longer than you, so I’ve got more real estate, I guess, to consider, but…are you happy with what you’ve done with your life? When you were younger, I know your daddy told you that you could be anything you wanted. For a while you wanted to be a tornado chaser, then a zookeeper, then a singer. Your parents taught you that you were a success, no matter what. But that’s a lie. You and me, we live mundane lives just doin’ what someone else tells us to do. Every day. Every goddamned day.” Earl keeps paddling, shakes his head, takes a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air.

                “People think they have free will, but how many times have we arrested some jackass who was just trying to live their life but couldn’t because what they wanted to do was against the law? Freedom is an illusion.” Earl lets out a deep sigh. “I’m done trying to fight it. I’m done trying to be the better man, trying to be the best law man I can be. I tried to be the best husband, the best partner, the best sheriff, and for what? All my life I stuck to the plan, kept my temper in check, left well enough alone. And you know what? I’m done reining in my anger. I’m done sticking to the plan. And if I want to leave well enough alone, well then goddamn it I’m going to and I’ll stop anyone who tries to keep me from it. Because if fighting your baser instincts, if following someone else’s orders is all life has to offer, then what’s the point? This place gave me a chance to become something I thought I could never be: happy. And in the end, Rook, isn’t that what matters? Happiness?”

                Earl steps out of the boat and onto the shore, gesturing for Rook to leave. He pushes forward into the open field, his opened hands running along the tops of the grasses and flowers as he goes, breathing in deep gulps of the Bliss, letting the happiness, the blankness run through him. He hears Burke’s voice through Rook’s radio.

                “Rook, goddamn it, get the Sheriff. We need him. Now hurry up.”

                Earl hears shuffling footsteps behind him and tries to move faster, tries to get deeper in the Bliss.

                “Don’t leave me, Earl,” Faith begs, fluttering in front of him.

                “Marshal, this is Rook. Virgil Minkler is here. He’s dead. The Sheriff killed him. I think he’s too far gone, sir.”

                “Shit.” There’s a long, pregnant pause. “Alright. Head back. Burke out.”

                “Marshal, it’s the sheriff. We can’t just leave him like this.”

                “Rook, either put a bullet in his head, or leave him. Either way, get your ass back here. Burke _out._ ”

 


	3. Mad World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rook realizes what she must do.  
> \-----------------------------------------

**ACT III - MAD WORLD**

 

_“I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core…But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.”_

_― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness_

                The grief I feel is unimaginable. Sheriff Earl Whitehorse was my friend, but more than that, he was my father after my own died. To see him this way, to see those dulled eyes, that sharp green haze over his usually friendly eyes cut me deeper than any injury the cult has yet inflicted on me. I could not bring myself to kill him. Not yet. I know I must soon. I took Virgil’s body back to the Hope County Jail. We gave him a proper burial. I don’t know what Faith did to the Sheriff, but he is no longer the man I knew and loved like a father.

                Earl had been struggling lately, hurting. Maybe I should have been there for him more, but it’s an odd thing, having your godfather be your commanding officer, your boss. I never knew if I was overstepping boundaries. I could tell he was lonely. So very lonely. After his wife left him for another man, I overstepped for sure exactly once. I gave her an ultimatum. She agreed to it. She left the county and never came back. Earl never did have to worry about her bothering him. My family had never been as close to Molly as we were to Earl, and after she gutted him with her betrayal I had no intention of allowing her to stay, to hurt him more.

                Earl had been stressed lately, deciding if he was retiring or running for re-election. He thinks no one else knows he’s planning to retire. I always know what Earl is up to. He has always been there for me. The least I can do is pay attention in case he needs me there for him. But then, I had failed at that, hadn’t I?

                Marshal Burke had told me to leave him, but it wasn’t sitting right with me, still isn’t. I need to kill Faith Seed anyway, destroy that godawful drug that made Earl this way in the first place. And then I need to put him down. Looking into those eyes, those soft eyes that had always looked at me with affection, and care and comfort, seeing that green glaze…he’s so far gone already he’s almost an angel. And there’s no coming back from being an angel. I had put every doctor and scientist I had encountered on the task of finding out and no. There is no coming back from the place Earl has gone to. Only death is the answer.

                I know what Faith’s been doing to him. She’s been taking his memories and manipulating them. Highlighting only the worst parts of his life to break him. Preventing him from remembering the best parts so that he wants to stay in the Bliss. I know because she tried to do the same thing to me, to Burke, to anyone she could get her hands on. She’s a liar and a manipulator, and I’m going to put a bullet right between her eyes for what she’s done to my godfather.

                I can’t help taking my face in my hands, wiping a tired hand through my hair. All of this would be worth it if I could have saved him, but the pain, the loss after working with him, after knowing him so long hurts almost more than I can bear. I saved Pratt. I saved Hudson. I wanted to save them all. But I can’t. I’m trying hard not to cry. Crying won’t accomplish anything in this mad world. With a laugh, I remember one of my better memories of Earl.

                He had taken me fishing for the first time. It was not an activity my dad enjoyed. My dad was a hunter, but Earl? Earl was a fisherman. I had been so excited, I had run down the dock, fallen and slammed my knee into my mouth, knocking out nearly all of my front baby teeth. I’d cried for a long while, mouth sore and bleeding. At first, Earl had looked like a deer in headlights, unsure what the hell to do or say, but he had bent down and wiped a tear from my cheek.

                “Come on, kiddo,” he told me. “These won’t get you anything. But these?” He reaches down and picks up a couple of tiny teeth from the dock. “The toothfairy gives good money for these. Your parents told you about the toothfairy, right?” I had nodded, sniffling. He smiles, eyes twinkling, handlebar mustache rising as his grin widens. “Alright. Look, I’ll keep ‘em safe for you.” He puts them in his breast pocket and wipes my mouth with his handkerchief before standing. “What do you say we get some ice cream after this?” I had nodded again, still crying a little.

                “We’re ssshhhtill gonna fisss?” I’d asked, tongue feeling haphazardly along the wet line of newly toothless gum.

                “Well, of course we’re still gonna fish, kid, that’s why we’re here.” He had stopped and looked down, looking a little hurt. “Unless you don’t wanna learn how.”

                “Shthill wanna fisss.”

                “Well, alright then,” he’d said, and my lesson had begun. Even now, it was one of my favorite activities. Even if I never got anything on the end of my line, fishing was my time to find peace with the world, to reset my mind. I don’t think I’d ever thanked him for teaching me how to fish. The thought touches that achy part of me that knows that Earl is lost forever, that knows that I’m the one who will have to put an end to him. I’m the one who will have to sort through a sea of angels until I find the one that looks like family.


	4. Violent Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rook has to put Earl down. Earl has a moment of clarity.

**ACT IV - VIOLENT ENDS**

 

_“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”_

_― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein_

 

                Happiness. Blankness. Bliss. Anger. Violence. Happiness. Blankness. Bliss. Happiness. Anger. Violence. Happiness. Blankness. Bliss. Happiness. Anger. Bliss. These are the only states of being Earl knows. If someone not reeking of Bliss comes too close, he feels his rage bubbling up, boiling over like an unwatched pot. He enacts violence, with gun at first, but then, as higher faculties fail, with his fists, and then, when he finds one that fits comfortably in his hands, a thick branch. Faith visits him sometimes. Laughs. He smiles dully at her. Happiness. Blankness. Bliss. She straightens his hat, cleans and replaces his glasses on his nose, touch gentle and sure. She doesn’t change him into the sanitarium clothing that all the rest of her angels are wearing. He can’t quite remember why, but he knows he is special. He is to be recognizable. Faith has put a cloth and leather mask, a muzzle over his mouth. It stops just beneath his nose, his mustache curls awkwardly over it, and it straps over and under his ears to behind his head where it is buckled beneath his hat. It is to make sure everyone knows he’s one of them, to make it unmistakable – he’s an Angel now. Happiness. He looks from one side to another, snuffling vaguely, eyes rolling like a wild animal’s, head lolling back and forth. He surveys flowers, grass. Blankness. He shields his eyes from the hot sun and winces, looking away, taking a deep breath of that sweet scent that is all around him. Bliss.

                Earl turns, thinks painfully of people and places other than here, pushes the intrusive thoughts away. There is only the Bliss. Happiness. Blankness. Bliss.

                Squinting, breathing hard beneath his muzzle, Earl turns his head and sees a familiar shape. Golden-brown hair. Short, compact stature. A familiar green uniform top. A familiar badge. A familiar tag reading “Rook.” Earl growls long and low in his throat, the growl of a rabid dog.

\--

                “Don’t make me do this,” I weep, tears flowing unnoticed down my face. I’m holding my rifle, a weapon Earl had given me for my eighteenth birthday, pointed at his head. “Please, please don’t make me do this,” I beg him. He looks at me, those features so familiar, this monstrous visage once so sweet to look upon now a horror of familiarity. “Your name is Earl Whitehorse. You are Sheriff of Hope County. You have been for twenty years. I’m your deputy.” My voice breaks and I choke back a sob. “I’m your goddaughter. My father was your best friend. Please,” I beg him as he puts one foot slowly, maliciously in front of the other, those scuffed and muddy boots bringing him this much closer to his certain death and to my own certain doom.

                Earl growls again, raising a stick he’s found somewhere. I can’t. I can’t do this to him. I can't just put a bullet in his head without giving him a chance to try to remember who he is. I can't just put an instantaneous end to a creature who was once a family member. I have lost too many friends already. I have to try to get him to remember, before he dies. I lower the aim of my weapon from his face to his chest and fire. He grunts, a full-body shudder racking through him and he hisses at me in anger and pain. He takes three more steps forward and I fire again. His shoulder is thrown back, but still he trudges forward. I fire again, and this time, he looks down, surveys the dented sheriff’s star at his breast, touches a hand to the bloody holes I’ve punched in him. He looks up at me, the green haze over his eyes seeming marginally lifted.

                “Rook?” he says weakly as he falls to his knees. I race forward, tossing my rifle to the side, cradling his torso in my lap, holding him up, unstrapping that nightmarish mask so he can breathe and talk more easily. His blood is hot and sticky on my hands, its smell like a penny that has been made aflame. His eyes, those eternally kind eyes have returned. Thick caterpillar eyebrows are pulled tightly up in their middles in surprise and grief and pain. He paws at my hand, shuddering.

                “Sheriff,” I punch out through tears. “Do you know who you are?”

                “I’m…I’m the sheriff of Hope county,” he murmurs, staring into my eyes. “I’m your godfather.” The agony of my grief, of my guilt, of the overwhelming raw injury to my soul is too much and I look to the heavens and scream, throat and eyes burning as tears drip down my face.

\--

                I remember her. Long after I was a bull rider, but before I was a sheriff there was little Robin Young, my best friend’s kid. I had taught her to fish. I had helped her father teach her to shoot, and to drive. I had protected her and loved her as though she was my own. When Virgil came by the office to pester me about how he thought I should do my job, she had happily brought me freshly made coffee, distracting Virgil, bringing peace between us. She had done something, I probably don’t want to know the details, that made my ex-wife no longer interested in living in Hope county. When her father had died, she had come to me and together we had dug ourselves out of the grief of losing him, a task that neither of us could have done as well alone. She had, with quiet grace, erased the ugly mental scars my father had left on me by showing me that I had the capability to be a good parent, even if she wasn’t my own. Rook was pure, and good, and the one thing I am most proud of in my life.

                But I failed her.

                It all comes rushing back now. The manipulation. The lies. The alteration of memories to make them feel and seem so much worse than they actually were. The erasure of all the good things in my life that made it so worth living. The good times with Molly. Grabbing a beer with Rook’s father Robert. Cordial, joking lunches with Virgil where we established, if not a friendship, then at least a quiet respect for one another, even if we were both jackasses at our core. Quiet mornings fishing with Rook. Training Rook. Teaching Rook how to fish and picking up tiny baby teeth she’d knocked out of her own mouth. I have one in my breast pocket still, a tiny white treasure that reminds me of that precious moment of her bravery and trust in me.

                But I failed her.

                I killed Virgil, I killed others. I am a monster now. They call this state “angelic” but it is a bastardization of the form, a cruel mockery of an angel. If ever there was an epithet for what I have become, it must surely be “demon.” With a sob of regret and guilt, feeling my own blood flow across my chest, I stare into her eyes one last time.

                “I am sorry, Rook,” I say, because I am. “I love you, kiddo,” I say, because I do. “Finish it,” I say, because I want it over with. “Please. Rook. Let me go.”

                With a trembling hand, she brings my .44 Magnum to my temple, tears streaking down her face. My hands are shaking too much to do it myself. She pulls the trigger, and I know no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, of course, a natural ending for this story, so you can choose to stop here. However, I was inspired at least partially by Westworld while writing this and wrote an alternate ending. If you are fine with the admittedly dark ending, stop here. If you'd like a (slightly) happier ending to the story, proceed to the next chapter.


	5. Our Better Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was this all madness? Is all we see or seem but a dream within a dream? (This is the action that I wish Earl had taken and the whole reason I wrote this fic ehehehe)

**ACT V - OUR BETTER ANGELS**

 

_“I stand amid the roar_

_Of a surf-tormented shore,_

_And I hold within my hand_

_Grains of the golden sand--_

_How few! yet how they creep_

_Through my fingers to the deep,_

_While I weep--while I weep!_

_O God! can I not grasp_

_Them with a tighter clasp?_

_O God! can I not save_

_One from the pitiless wave?_

_Is all that we see or seem_

_But a dream within a dream?”_

_-Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within A Dream_

 

                Earl awakens with a start, feeling nauseated. He rubs his temple after pushing his headset out of the way, caterpillar brows furrowed. He shakes from his mind images of death, and bombs, and violence. He shakes away a memory that is not a memory of a burning forest and a crash just outside a bunker. He shakes away a memory that is not a memory of a song and a sudden violent ending. He feels, overwhelmingly, as though he’s been here before, tried this before a hundred different ways, but never the right one. The _thubthubthub_ of the chopper’s wings is disorienting as he tries to focus.

                “Past your bedtime, Sheriff?” Burke asks with amusement, giving him an assessing look as he feels himself go a little pale, not knowing how or why he’s seeing these things.

                “No. No, I’m finally awake,” Earl tells him softly. He looks down at the swarming activity amongst the cult below, looks across at the junior deputy, his goddaughter, and knows what he must do. This cult is too dangerous to deal with alone. “Turn this chopper around, Pratt. Now.”

                “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Sheriff?” Burke demands. Earl snaps his green-blue eyes to Burke’s dark brown ones.

                “What I should have insisted on doing in the first place. We can’t just five of us take down this cult.”

                “But I have a warrant for–”

                “Shut up and listen! If we go in there and put cuffs on Joseph Seed, none of us get out of here alive.”

                “I will have you all arrested!”

                “So be it,” Earl snaps, about to tug his headset off entirely when Hudson speaks.

                “Sir, with all due respect, we can’t leave the people of Hope county under this cult’s control,” she objects.

                “We’re not going to leave them,” Earl explains softly as Pratt starts to bank away from the cult compound. “We’re going to Missoula. We’re going to get the National Guard. Pratt. Fly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoyed my work? Loved it? Hated it? Let me know in the comments!
> 
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> 
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